Quotes By Jenny Holzer

When my daughter was young, she thought all electronic signs were mine.

I seldom have my stuff up unless I'm testing it. If I'm worrying about a painting, I put it up and see if I detest it quickly or slowly. Otherwise I have things by other artists.

Expiring for love is beautiful but stupid.

Well, I think in trying to make life seem real enough that one is moved to do something about the more atrocious things. By going really far afield into a completely fake world, maybe there's a chance to make things resonant somehow - or in this case, truly terrifying. To make it as bad as the real stuff that's happening.

The most profound things are inexpressible.

I began to see that the short texts I was writing were poster material.

It's fun wandering around other people's minds.

I wanted to be an abstract painter, but I was rotten at it.

Company makes my day.

I wanted to support things that are helpful to people and maybe bash what I think is dangerous. So I switched from being everybody to being myself.

It's necessary to start most work alone. But I'm tickled to death when I can pull somebody in or join someone, whether it's borrowing poetry or traveling with an associate.

Sloppy thinking gets worse over time.

I'm always trying to bring unusual content to a different audience - a non-art-world audience.

I'd been doing projects outdoors for the public. I made pigeons eat geometry by putting bread out in rhomboids and triangles. I don't know if this activity made sense, but the work was available.

The desperate things seem to require attention, the lovely things seem to elicit celebration. If I had to choose, I would go to the awful in the hope that doing something could yield a happier result.

I get up about four times a night and go back to sleep, or not. Then I swill tea around 8 a.m. I answer e-mail, while I stall thinking about whatever scares me.

I think of a piece, and then people who are competent fabricate it. But lately I've started finger painting, which probably should be a joke but isn't!

I am not free because I can be exploded anytime.

That's the test of street art - to see if anybody stopped. People would cross out ones they didn't like and would star others. I liked that people would engage with them.

On the worst days, I don't feel like an artist.

One thing that changed when I moved upstate was that I became interested in different materials. I started making the stone benches because I was seeing rocks.

Protect me from what I want.

I really like doing the laundry, because I succeed at it. But I loathe putting it away. It is already clean.

I moved to New York in the 1970s and started writing when I was at the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program.

One of the glories and terrors of working in public is that you do see if your output means anything to anyone.

I'd paint long strips of canvas and abandon them on the beach, or put bread out in geometric patterns for the pigeons downtown. I wanted people to find something nice and intriguing to puzzle over. Then I'd go back to see if the things were still there, or if anyone would notice.

It can be kind of gruesome at times, making things alone.

Lack of charisma can be fatal.

The epiphany for me was that I wasn't a writer, and I had to do something with these texts. I put them in the streets as posters.

I used language because I wanted to offer content that people - not necessarily art people - could understand.